The Legendary Indians

On August 9, 1925 ten men held up the 8 Down train at Kakori, a village near Lucknow, and looted its official railway cash. The Government reaction was quick and harsh. It arrested a large number of young men and tried them in the Kakori Conspiracy Case.

Ashfaqulla Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged. Four were sent to the Andamans for life, and seventeen others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Only Chandrashekhar Azad remained at large. In February 1931, Azad was trapped by the police in a public park in Allahabad. Azad shot himself in the temple with the last bullet that he had.

Followed by:

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• The Indian hockey team set sail for Germany in the ocean liner 'Aitheneaver' to participate in the Berlin Olympics. The journey lasted 15 days. The team lost hundreds of hockey balls while practising on the deck of the liner.
  
  
• One day after their arrival in Germany, India played a warm up game against a German side and lost 1-4. An urgent cable message went out from Berlin, asking for the services of A. I. S. Dara. Dara was air dashed to Berlin, just one day before India's semi-final match.
  
  
• India beat Hungary 4-0, United States 7-0 and Japan 9-0. Dara joined the team for the 10-0 massacre of France in the semi-finals. No team had scored a single goal against India in their relentless march to the finals.
  
  
• India met Germany in the final on August 15, 1936. The Indian team assembled in the dressing room prior to the match. All the players reverently saluted the tricolour of the Indian National Congress, which their Assistant Manager had taken with him to Berlin.
  
  
• The final started at 11:00 am before a record crowd of 40,000 spectators, the biggest ever to witness a hockey match in the Olympic Games. Among the audience was the ruler of Baroda, the princess of Bhopal, and other Indians who had travelled from the Continent.
  
  
• India was up by 6 goals in the finals. The Germans now decided to play rough. Going for Dhyan Chand, the German goalkeeper removed one of his teeth. Coming back after receiving first aid, the bare-footed Dhyan Chand instructed his team to go easy on goals. "We must teach them a lesson in ball control," he said. As the stunned crowd watched, the Indians repeatedly took the ball up to the German circle and then backpassed to dumbfound their opponents. India ultimately prevailed over Germany 8-1 in the finals to win its third successive Olympic gold medal.
  
  
• The Fuhrer was very impressed by Dhyan Chand's performance in the finals. At a dinner party after the finals, Hitler offered to elevate Dhyan Chand to the rank of a Colonel if he migrated to Germany. Dhyan Chand turned down the offer.
  
  
• This was to be the last Olympics of 'Hockey Wizard' Dhyan Chand. World War II intervened to prevent any more Olympic appearances of the hockey immortal. Dhyan Chand is to hockey what Bradman is to cricket and Pele is to soccer. Dhyan Chand scored over a thousand goals in a career spanning 1926 - 1948.
  
  
• The ultimate tribute was paid to him by a sports club in Vienna, which built a statue of Dhyan Chand with four hands and four sticks. To those Viennese, no ordinary man with two hands and one stick could have played so well. Every age produces its own genius. But the only hockey wizard of the 20th Century has been Major Dhyan Chand, the king among centre-forwards.
  
  
• Joseph Garibaldi, who resides in London, is the only surviving member of the 1936 Indian hockey team. He emigrated to England in 1956. Joseph Garibaldi remembers having met the great Jesse Owens. He told Owens that he must be the favourite for his events. Owens replied, "this is my first Olympic Games, therefore I cannot be sure. On the other hand, the Indian hockey team has always won the gold medal."